KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 15 — Twenty six years after the first Mazda Miata or MX-5 rolled off the Mazda production line in Hiroshima, Japan, and just short of a million units have been produced and delivered; the latest 2015 Miata has come to Malaysia. This is the fourth generation of the world’s best selling roadster, and judging it from just its looks alone, I can say that Mazda have come up with yet another winner. This is a car that you might want to buy, not because it is good to look at, but because it still possesses the ‘rawness’ of a true roadster, because it still allows you to let your hair down, because it will still turn eyes, because it allows you to have fun (relatively) cheap, and because it will still bring a fond smile to your face another thirty or forty years down the road. This is a car you can keep, and pass down to your kids or your grandkids. This is the Mazda Miata.
I just checked on Mudah.my, and there is a beautifully-kept 1993 Miata that looks as good as when it was new, maybe even better, because it has larger wheels, asking for RM68,000, for serious buyers only. I don’t know how much the original Malaysian buyer paid for it back in 1993, or perhaps it came in as a parallel import, but it couldn’t have been even that much. The problem with trying to get a used one is that nobody seems to want to sell theirs.
Back to the present — I was given the official ‘test car’ from Bermaz, the local distributors for the Mazda brand — they only have one car available, and it did take some time for it to get into my hands, what with my busy schedules, and many motoring journalists wanting to get their hands on it. I reckoned the best thing to do was to do the Ulu Yam run starting from Selayang, through to Ulu Yam Village and on to Gohtong Jaya by the twisty back road, a thorough shake-down, so to speak.
I brought a ‘contributor’ with me, an avid car fan, whom we shall call ‘JS’ for short. The first part of the drive was from Petaling Jaya to Batu Caves, which was uneventful, given the heavy traffic and the right-lane hoggers who were out in force during a public holiday. The car was a head turner, though, with many people ‘holding station’ with us just to get more of an eyeful of this cute little roadster. JS drove for the first part so I could ‘fiddle’ with the gadgets and stuff that came with the Miata.
In terms of size, it is small, being just 3,915mm long. The Mazda 2 hatchback is 4,060mm, almost six inches longer. The Miata is 1,230mm high, or roughly 10 inches shorter than the Mazda 2, but is 1,735mm wide, or about an inch and a half wider than the Mazda 2. The comparison to the Mazda 2 is just for reference only — the two cars look completely different, are different mechanically, and drive totally differently. For the uninitiated, the Miata comes with a 158 horsepower, 2.0 litre SKYACTIV engine that is adapted from the Mazda 3 and Mazda 6, but mounted in the North-South kerb weight of just 1,080kg, and a final drive that is tuned for sporty acceleration, the Miata is a little pocket rocket if you so wish it to be.
Once we got onto the winging B-road towards Ulu Yam, it started raining heavily, and so it became a little bit of a ‘cruise’, with JS tasked with the job of staying far enough behind other cars because we hadn’t taken any pictures of the Miata yet, and didn’t want any ‘road spray’ to dirty up the beautiful red paint. Fortunately for us, the rain stopped just before we entered Ulu Yam village, but we decided to give the car a wash at one of the many car wash shops just before the village. Needless to say, the car wash guys were quite impressed with the Miata, and took great pains to give it a loving wash and wipe down.
After the wash, JS continued the drive, this time on a dry road, up to Gohtong Jaya. Sitting as a passenger, I felt pretty good, and the sure-footedness of the Miata – the use of a double wishbone suspension at the front and a multi-link layout at the rear, with many aluminium parts to keep the un-sprung weight down pays dividends in terms of excellent handling, sure-footed tracking, and the driver gets very good ‘feedback’ on exactly what the tyres are doing on the road. Not being a ‘good’ passenger, despite the knowledge that the car could handle whatever we could throw at it, made me wish that there was an ‘OMG’ handle (you know, the little handle usually found on top of the doors of most cars), in the Miata. The fact that it has a rag top precludes the fitting of the handle, but I think there is a little space on the A-pillar that might just be able to accommodate one. There is actually nothing for the passenger’s idle left hand to grab on. Not that it would make the car go any faster, but it sure helps to ease the mind somewhat.
All too soon for JS, we arrived at Gohtong Jaya, and we proceeded to the tong sui shop in the area for a bowl of bubur-chacha. As we drove into the shops area, I distinctly heard a loud exclamation, “Wah! Lawa!” The Miata clearly is a head-turner — I guess the people there see Porsches, Lambos and Skylines every other day, and the Miata is something fresh. There were quite a lot of visitors from out of town, and people were visibly gawking at the Miata. The funny thing is, guys with girlfriends would deliberately NOT look at the Miata, but the girls, almost without exception, did. It was an interesting half an hour sitting there, watching the girls tugging at their boyfriend’s sleeves, pointing at the Miata, and the boys pretending to be disinterested.
Then it was my turn to drive — we deliberated taking the regular route through the Karak highway back, but the Ulu Yam route won in the end, on account of the more interesting corners, and on account of there being many speed bumps along the regular route. Just as we were about to hit the roundabout that opens up into the Ulu Yam stretch, there was this ‘prap-prap’ sounding Nissan Sylvia, with what sounded like a heavily modded turbo-charger swept past, and took the same exit to our intended route, which made it very interesting indeed. I wanted to see what this little ‘David’ could do against that ‘Goliath’.
We followed the Sylvia for a little bit, with me observing his driving style — I found that he was a ‘straight line driver, boosting up on the straights, then lifting off to go easy round the corners without accelerating until the car was straight again. The Sylvia is faster on acceleration, and the Miata’s normally raucous exhaust could hardly be heard above the racket made by the Sylvia, but we could keep up. The Miata literally sticks to the road, and is highly ‘predictable’ — you can make it step out a little if you want to, and its nimbleness and ability to change direction anytime allows you to take any line, or change line in the middle of a corner. Anyway, I figured, correctly that these ‘highly modified’ cars (which usually mean that they turn the boost up without looking at cooling and air-fuel ratio issues) don’t last very long when pushed. True enough, after about five minutes of spirited driving, the Sylvia had to slow down to cool off, but not before we edged past it. (Actually, I heard the Sylvia’s blow-off valve giving out one last and very loud ‘Whishhh’ as the driver over-boosted, after which we never saw the Sylvia again. As a point in passing, JS was looking for that elusive OMG handle this time — in fact, he was the one who said there is space on the A-pillar to fit one.
That last stint of exuberant driving told me quite a bit about the Miata — it is good for day-to-day use, with damping set on the sporty side of comfortable. The standard 17-inch wheels with the 205/45 R17’s are good for everyday use, but inching up a couple of notches, with wider rubbers will do wonders. Obviously, the designers wanted a car that has a good balance between a comfortable ride and good handling, and have left some room for DIY motor-heads to play. A case in point is the fender to top-of-tyre clearance — again, it is a case of making allowance for enthusiasts to inch-up on wheels, and perhaps go wider on the treads. It won’t be long when the wires will be abuzz with offers for suspension and other performance upgrades.
Once we hit Ulu Yam, traffic got a little heavy, and so we did a relaxing drive all the way back to Petaling Jaya – when I got the car, it showed an average fuel consumption of 9.3 litres per 100 kilometres since the last reset — I don’t know how long ago that was, but bearing in mind that this car has been constantly tested by motoring media, and has been driven quite hard, this is actually an impressive number. Driven ‘normally’, it should return numbers of around 8.0 to 8.5 litres per hundred kilometres. I reset the fuel consumption monitor just before I left Petaling Jaya – with the hard driving up and down from Gohtong Jaya, the number went up to 11.1 litres per 100 kilometres, but by the time I returned the car the next day, it was an improved number of 10.7 litres per 100 kilometres. This speaks well for the fuel economy of the Miata. I have two other cars which, if driven with the same verve, would show numbers like 18.0 litres per 100 kilometres and 15 litres per 100 kilometres. In comparison, the Miata can provide the same amount of driving fun, but will cost much less, especially in fuel.
The Miata MX-5 of course comes with quite a bit of goodies — ABS, EBD, traction control, connectivity, and an audio system, which I am sure is quite decent,( but which I didn’t test for long, because nobody I know who would want a Miata would really care).
All I can say is, I enjoyed every moment of the short time I had with it. Would I buy one? Yes, if I could just find RM227k to spare, and I promise I will never sell it.
